Keeping Fit With Less Effort

What's the least effort you can do to keep fit?

Answer: Most physiologists agree that to maintain fitness, you need to exercise at 65% of your maximum capacity for 15 minutes a day, three times a week.

What's your maximum capacity? A heart rate of 220 minus your age.

So if you're 40, a pulse of about 120 (220-40x.65) is what you should be tailoring your workouts to sustain.

There's no need to overexercise--so long as you're consistent. Rather than knocking yourself out on weekends trying to make up for lost time, you're far better off setting up a schedule that's leisurely enough to live day to day.

What should you do? Something you enjoy.

A lot of the agony of exercise for many people is mental. Take walks. Play tag with the kids.

Anything to get your mind off your muscles. If you enjoy dancing, great.

Studies have shown that layoffs as brief as 2-1/2 days can begin to reserve the effects of exercises--so if you take a weekend off, be prepared to get back into the swing of things first thing Monday morning.

TIDBITS. Exercise, studies confirm, is the key to the prevention of osteoporosis, the degenerative bone disease afflicting 25 percent of women over 50.

The Journal of the American Medical Association (in a past issue) reports that, while dietary calcium supplements help slow the age-related bone loss, regular jogging or walking enhances bone formation. Taking supplements without exercise is "like settling for half a loaf, " says JAMA.

One group of women (mean ages: 53) exercised three times weekly, increasing their bone mass 2.6 percent in a year; a sedentary control group had a 2.4 percent mass loss.

When you run long distances, you may also be giving your heart extra mileage. JAMA reports that marathon running, or other sustained exercise, increases the body's level of high density lipoprotein (HDL) which has been associated with lower cardiovascular death rates.